SICONOS - Project Overview

Mission and Scope

What is the purpose and scope of this document ?

This document aims at presenting a general description of the Siconos platform project. It describes, in a very general way, the major objectives of the platform and the major constraints of development and exploitation. It is addressed to users and software framework builders.

What is the scope of this project?

This project belongs to the European project SICONOS, dedicated to the modeling, the control the analysis and the simulation of the so-called ``Non Smooth Dynamical system'' NSDS. More details on this European project can be found on the website of the Project http://siconos.inrialpes.fr.

The design and the development of the Siconos platform which is one of the major objective of this European project, is told the work package 2 ("Numerical methods and algorithms'') in confidence; More details on this European project can be found on the website of the WP2 : http://siconos.inrialpes.fr/software.

What are the main objectives and motivations ?

The first version of the objectives can be found in the Annex 1 of the proposition of the European Project.
Besides the standard features which are required for a software of scientific computing, the objectives of this project are of the following :
  • To provide a common framework (modeling and simulation tools) for non smooth problems present in various scientific fields : applied Mathematics, Mechanics, Robotics, Electrical networks, etc.
  • To be able to rely on existing developments, as well for the modeling tools as for the simulation tools. The platform will not re-implement the dedicated tools, which are already used for the modeling of specific systems in various fields,but will provide a framework to their integration. In the same way, we want to re-use improved numerical low-level routines.
  • To support exchanges and comparisons of methods between researchers.
  • To disseminate the know-how to other fields of research and industry.
  • To take into account the diversity of users (end users, experts, software developers, framework builders, industrial users, etc ... ).
  • To set up standards in terms of modeling of the NSDS.
  • To ensure software quality by the use of modern software design methods.

What is the exploitation context ?

The Siconos platform should be used as well by research academic teams as by the industries, interested in NSDS. As we said earlier, the platform must rely on existing habits of the community if users, that we want to reach. The exploitation must take into account these hard constraints.

To fulfill the constraints on the existing habits of a variety of users, the user interface must be implemented in three ways :

  • An expert and proper interface must be developed, allowing the access of the maximum of the functionalities of the platform. A accurate definition of an API of the platform based on all public method of the contained classes is unavoidable. A interface to this API in a scripting (interpreted) language should be suitable.
  • An xxxlab interface, for instance for Scilab (www.scilab.org A free scientific software package for numerical computations developed at INRIA too with the same functionalities to Matlab)
  • Finally, a graphical user interface (GUI) embedded in a integrated modeling and simulation environment.
To fulfill the constraints to re-use the existing development and software, the product must implement this two functionalities :
  • To have a user plug-in interface to use in an easy way the code which already model, non smooth dynamical. This users plug-in system intend to provide to the user the possibility to input his data without recompiling the platform
  • To have a expert plug-in system, which allows us to specify the behavior of a generic type of NSDS in the platform by loading dynamically new types of derived systems.

Status

The project is currently under development, a first public version will be ready for October 2005

Project Document

Inception: Project presentation
Specification: It aims to define precisely the software to realize. It describes functionalities and characteristics of the software and constraints of development and exploitation. It is addressed to users and software framework builders.
Design: Design

Software Development Methodology

Define the software architecture of the Siconos. This architecture relies on the specification.
Quality Plan QA Plan Check that the project is consistent
Glossary
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